Building Design: Big names urge Israelis to end ‘oppressive’ works

Helen Crump, Building Design Magazine25 May 2007

Alsop, Farrell and MacCormac join call to stop work on schemes that oppress Palestinians

I think the Palestinians are living in a prison and they deserve better than that.. I’d like fellow colleagues in Israel to feel some responsibility about this shabby treatment. Architects are a fairly humanitarian lot and perhaps they could help... This is not against Israel, it’s for Palestine.

A host of celebrated architects including Will Alsop, Terry Farrell, Richard MacCormac, Rick Mather and Ted Cullinan have waded into the politics of the Middle East with a challenge to fellow professionals in Israel to cease work that “excludes and oppresses” Palestinians.

The architects, who also include Royal Institute of British Architects(RIBA) president Jack Pringle and president-elect Sunand Prasad, have signed a petition organised by Architects & Planners for Justice in Palestine which accuses construction professionals working on three separate Israeli developments of “social, political and economic oppression.”

“APJP asserts that the actions of our fellow professionals working with these enterprises are clearly unethical, immoral and contravene universally recognised professional codes of conduct,” a spokesman said.

“We ask the Israeli Association of United Architects (IAUA) to meet their professional obligations … to declare their opposition to this inhuman occupation.”

The IAUA was unavailable for comment, but the action was condemned as foolish and damaging by Michael Peters, founder and chairman of the Identica brand agency, who has worked extensively with architects in Israel.

“British architects are going to burn their bridges with a number of developers — Israeli, British and European,” he said.

Last year Richard Rogers faced stinging criticism from US clients after he hosted a meeting of APJP (News March 10, 2006).

The petition, which focuses on the village of Silwan in east Jerusalem, the E1 plan for the expansion of Israeli settlement Ma’ele Adumim, and former Palestinian village Lifta, was strongly defended by Alsop.

“I think the Palestinians are living in a prison and they deserve better than that,” he said. “I’d like fellow colleagues in Israel to feel some responsibility about this shabby treatment. Architects are a fairly humanitarian lot and perhaps they could help.”

He added: “This is not against Israel, it’s for Palestine.”

Petition organiser Abe Hayeem, a London-based architect and APJP chair, called his fellow architect supporters “pretty courageous”, and insisted architects would not be deterred from backing causes they supported.

But Peters said British architects did not understand the situation in Israel.“Getting involved in a lobby group can only do a disservice to the whole architectural profession,” he added. “To accuse [Israeli] architects of being complicit is nonsense.”

E1 – The Illegal Link That Consolidates The Occupation

Architects & Planners For Justice In Palestine(APJP)

We call on Israeli architects and planners to end their indifference and blindness to the political implications of their professional work and ethics. They should recognize their complicity in the injustices resulting from their participation in consolidating the Occupation, and the terrible suffering being inflicted on the Palestinians..

Israel’s settlements are illegal under international law and the Geneva Convention, and Maale Adumim, its largest settler city stands out as the key factor in Israel’s colonial expansion as far west as possible from Jerusalem towards Jericho. Most of Maale Adumim (87%) is built on Palestinian-owned land. Maale Adumim was planned by the Thomas Leitersdorf (AA dipl) and designed by Elioar Barzacchi (the Mother of Maale Adumim) in the 1980s as the chief architect for the Jerusalem district at the Construction and Housing Ministry which created and is still creating facts on the ground that thwart negotiations on the city's future and is causing infringements of the rights of Palestinians in East Jerusalem and implementing a policy of occupation and annexation, land confiscation, discrimination and expulsion. The "empty" hills of Ma'aleh Adumim were not empty and "Mohammed" was indeed told to get up and go, like all the members of the Jahalin tribe that is now forced to live in the area of the Abu Dis garbage dump, as journalist Gideon Levy recently wrote.

The road to Ma'ale Adumimcutting between the newly fenced in townof Al-Izariyyah and the village of A-Zayim

E1 is the hilly area between East Jerusalem and Maale Adumim that Israel is intending to annex, to form a continuous urban development. Currently Israel is confiscating lands on the northern and western side of the settlement of Ma’ale Adumim just outside of Jerusalem . These confiscations (without compensation) are taking place from the Palestinian villages of Anata, Al-Izariyyah, Abu Dis and A-Zayim. The intention of this action is to expand the municipal area of Ma’ale Adumim westward to join up with Jerusalem . But as ‘Ir-Amim’, the Israeli website on Jerusalem has stated, E1 is not Maale Adumim and cannot be considered as expansion of that town, which is in any case illegal. Currently, Ma’ale Adumim houses some 30,000 settlers. Under the E1 project an additional 5,600 more settlement homes for approximately 25,000 new residents will be added to its municipal area. Additionally, some 1,600 dunums of land are being confiscated to erect Israel ’s Apartheid wall for Ma’ale Adumim.

The police station for E1 has already been built despite its land confiscation and illegality, and the road network and street lights have also been built in readiness for the new housing near that land.

E1 expansion plan

This action is not only in contravention of the US sponsored road map agreement, but it would effectively destroy any future possibility of a contiguous Palestinian state by cutting off east Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank, and by cutting of the northern part of the West Bank from the southern part..It is a deliberate violation of the Road Map, Oslo , and any basis for negotiating land for peace. When complete the total land area of Ma’ale Adumim and E1 will be 65,000 dunums, an area larger than Tel Aviv, in the heart of what would have been a Palestinian state.

We call in Israeli architects and planners to end their indifference and blindness to the political implications of their professional work and ethics. They should recognize their complicity in the injustices resulting from their participation in consolidating the Occupation, and the terrible suffering being inflicted on the Palestinians in the Occupied West Bank. We call on all parties to halt this illegal project forthwith , as required by the International Court of Justice in its ruling on the Wall in 1994.

"[Deportation at the airport] We saw the injured [Turkish] men going through.. a lot had a leg cut out of their trousers or an arm cut out of their top. It had been cut out to treat their wounds.. they were covered in blood, blood that had been there for three days, and some of them had wounds that were still bleeding.. What upset me most was seeing the dozen men, one after another, hobbling across the terminal, with a bandaged foot. I couldn't ask them why so many of them had a bandaged foot, I couldn't ask them what had happened, because if they spoke or if any of us spoke to them the Israelis beat the injured person.. We later found out that they had these injuries on the tops of their feet from when the troops came down from the helicopter on the Mavi Marmara, and they came down firing - they had been shot from above. Some of the men that were killed were shot at close range - head and chest, but a dozen of the men who were shot, among 59 people who were shot, they were shot at the tops of their feet - the bullets were coming down.. They weren't given a wheelchair or a pair of crutches, and if any of the other passengers stood up and tried to offer [help].. that person was dragged away and smacked by these Israelis. The Israeli soldiers sat on the floor, laughed and sniggered and made every one of these Turkish men hobble and hop all the way across, some 200 metres, everyone of them, one by one, made to do that purely for the sick amusement of the Israeli soldiers."